For the Boids
Posted on December 12, 2006
A big Bronx cheer for my favorite pet store, 33rd and Bird. This marvelous aviary has flown the coop on East 33rd in Manhattan in favor of a 5 thousand-foot showroom in the Bronx. I don’t live in New York and I don’t often get to the Bronx so I’ll miss mumbling toity toid and boid and taunting its star attraction, a loud, hammy kookabura.
This brash bird may have found good company in the Bronx, however. European researchers have discovered that big city birds are likely to jabber in a staccato in-your-beak urban rap. (Boydz in the Hood?) while their country cousins chew on their chirps in an easy drawl. A researcher at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands says the city slickers may be trying to drown out urban noise.
This week the National Audubon Society begins its yearly ritual, the annual Christmas Bird Count. Last year more than 57 thousand volunteers joined in the twitch (bird talk for count), aimed at tabulating both resident and migratory birds and the state of their habitats. Dates are December 14th to January 5th.
And, if you have any doubt about which bird to twitch –which is which — check out whatbird.com. Whatbird is the labor of love of Mitch Waite, who made his fame and fortune publishing such potboilers as “Data Structures & Algorithms in Java” (not the island in Indonesia, but he computer language). Mitch has morphed his considerable talents in translating mind-numbing computer jargon to birdwatching, which has a similarly exclusionary vocabulary. Listening to an avid twitcher ramble about the “jizz” (general characteristics) of a bird or adding a “lifer” to his list is only a wren’s-beak away from boasting over the size of ones RAM.
At whatbird.com you can build your own field guides of North American birds, browse birds by state, spot them in an online game or find then in an “intelligent” search engine…a birdbrain not (stop me, please). Actually, simply scrolling down the list and pictures of birds is as good as reading a textbook.
You may even spot a frugivorous butter-butt (that’s bird talk for a Yellow-rumped Warbler). Amaze your friends. Happy twitching.
» Filed Under New York, Tech & Science, Misc.
